This is where Clair Ching will be posting her thoughts and whatever she learns at work if internet access is limited. (In short, where places blogging services and blogs are banned, my posts will be here.)

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

When your project is analysis heavy...

your analysts need a lot of docs and they need the context for the docs. They need to interview people who know the data, the business rules and cases. So what do you need to do in the first place? Give them access to those documents, to those people. If you don't, it will be hard for them to catch up.

It's better to gather enough data to figure out what the scope of the problem really is than relying on the ideal cases, ideal data to be included in the analysis, as well as business processes. Sometimes, things might seem simple but it's not always like that. A particular business/client could have modified their process or documentation (or both) such that it becomes more complex. Understanding such things takes time. Especially when your team of analysts are not that familiar with the domain.

Also, never assume that just because there are some basic documents which have been used as basis of analysis, your analysts are ok. Maybe for initial gathering they're already fine but it's not necessarily going to be enough to show what the domain model is. How could one draw an ERD based on the basic guidebook for a particular set of users and it doesn't necessarily reflect the business model?

A project manager must be able to help his team in doing their tasks and not just ask them later on "Why aren't you done yet? Haven't you done the initial work already?" because there are times that there's really so much more than what is apparent.